Josiah Cooley House

Laundry Wagon, Longmeadow, Massachusetts

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A horse-drawn wagon for Scott’s Laundry, seen on Emerson Road near the corner of Longmeadow Street in Longmeadow, Massachusetts in 1914. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Paesiello Emerson Collection.

The same scene in 2023:

These two photos were taken from near the same spot as the ones in the previous post, but just a little farther to the east. But, unlike the older image in that post, the main subject of the 1914 photo here is not the house, but rather the people and the wagon in the foreground. The wagon bears the name of L. Dorenbaum, who was an agent for Scott’s Laundry, and the image shows a man, presumably Dorenbaum, standing next to the horse, with a young woman seated in the carriage.

Louis Dorenbaum was born in Russia in 1878. He was Jewish, and he came to America as a child in 1887, likely to escape the antisemitic pogroms that were happening in Russia at the time. He lived in Springfield’s Forest Park neighborhood, which had a large Jewish population at the turn of the 20th century, and by the time the top photo was taken he was about 36 years old and was living at 810 Belmont Avenue in Springfield, along with his wife Agnes and their children Myron, Pauline, and Blanche. It seems unclear if the person in the carriage was a relative, but she seems too young to have been Agnes (who was 31 at the time), but too old to have been either of his daughters (who were 8 and 6).

The photo shows Dorenbaum’s laundry wagon in Longmeadow, on Emerson Road (or Depot Road, as it was known at the time) near the corner of Longmeadow Street. The house in the background is the Josiah Cooley house, which was built around 1760 and is described in more detail in an earlier post. The photographer, Paesiello Emerson, lived in this house with his half siblings Annie and Henry Emerson, and the house was often a subject of his photos. This photo is somewhat unusual for him, though, because he typically did not photograph people, instead preferring buildings, trees, and landscapes. It’s hard to say why Emerson chose to take this photo. It is possible that he knew Dorenbaum, but it also seems possible that he may have wanted to capture this image of a more of transportation that, by 1914, was rapidly vanishing in favor of motor vehicles.

Louis Dorenbaum lived in Springfield until the early 1940s. The 1940 census shows him at a house on Blodgett Street, and his occupation was listed as delivery driver for a laundry, although he was probably no longer using horse-drawn wagons by that point. He later moved to Milton, where his son Myron was working as a dentist. Louis died there in 1947, at the age of  70.

Today, the house that Dorenbaum posed in front of in the top photo is still standing. It has seen some changes over the years, including the removal of the so-called “coffin door” that is partially visible on the south side of the house behind the horse’s head in the top photo. Overall, though, it has remained well preserved in its historic appearance, and it is one of the oldest surviving homes in Longmeadow.

Josiah Cooley House, Longmeadow, Massachusetts (5)

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The house at the corner of Longmeadow and Emerson Streets in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1917. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Paesiello Emerson Collection.

The house in 2023:

This house has been featured in previous posts, and there are many early 20th century images of it thanks to Paesiello Emerson, an amateur photographer who lived here during that period. As explained in more detail in an earlier post, the house is believed to have been built around 1760 as the home of Josiah and Experience Cooley. An earlier house, belonging to Josiah’s father Eliakim, had stood here on this same spot earlier in the 18th century, and it is possible that the current house may have been built in part on the foundation of Eliakim’s house.

These two photos show the view of the back of the house from the southwest, on what is now Emerson Road. From this angle, the house would have looked very different when it was initially constructed. It was built as a saltbox, with a second floor on the front part of the house and a long sloping roof here on the back of the house. However, when Josiah and Experience’s granddaughter Lucy Colton inherited the house in the late 1820s, she modernized and expanded the house.

Some of this work included raising the roof to create a full second story, along with additions on the north and west sides of the house. The two-story northern addition, which is visible in the distance on the far side of the house, included living space for Lucy’s son Luther Woolworth Colton and his newlywed wife Abigail. The western addition, shown on the left side of these photos, was one story in height, and it appears to have been used for storage and workshop space, rather than as living space

Aside from these structural changes, Lucy also made some interior and exterior design changes, in keeping with early 19th century trends. On the exterior, this included removing the original 12-over-12 windows from the front of the house and replacing them with new 6-over-6 windows. However, rather than discarding the old windows, they were installed here on the back part of the house and in the back addition, likely because they would not be as visible from the street.

The house would remain in the Cooley-Colton family for several more decades, but in 1869 Lucy’s son Josiah Cooley Colton sold the house and 20 acres of land to Bradford W. Palmer for $4,500. The Palmer family, however, would only stay here for a few years before selling it to William G. Emerson, a carpenter who was originally from eastern Massachusetts. His family included his wife Lovina and their children William, Annie, and Henry. The elder William died in 1887, Lovina died in 1897, and at some point the younger William moved into a house of his own in Longmeadow, but Annie and Henry would live here for their entire lives.

Neither Annie nor Henry ever married, but in 1907 they were joined here by their older half brother Paesiello Emerson. He was a widower in his mid-70s, and he had worked for much of his life as a boot maker. However, when he was in his 70s he took up photography as a hobby. He tended to prefer photographing landscapes and old buildings, and he captured several thousand images, including many here in Longmeadow. He continued his photography into his 90s, creating a valuable photographic archive of the town’s early 20th century development.

Paesiello Emerson died here in the house in 1927 at the age of 95. At some point in the 1920s, William Emerson also returned to live here, and he died in the house in 1930 at the age of 81. The two younger siblings, Annie and Henry, remained here until their deaths in 1941 and 1943, at the age of 81 and 77 respectively. Henry was a farmer who grew raspberries and asparagus here, along with raising poultry. Annie was a teacher, but she was also the town historian. She conducted extensive research on the historic homes in Longmeadow, including her own, and much of the information about this house is based on her notes.

The house was sold by the Emerson heirs after Henry’s death in 1943, and subsequent owners did some restoration work as well as modernization of the house. Here on the back part of the house, this included adding an enclosed porch to the back of the house and adding an open porch to the back addition. The garage was also extended outward by a few feet to accommodate cars, and a second garage door was added. Other changes, which are hard to notice from this particular angle, included removing the “coffin door” from the south side of the house, and adding another second-story window to the back of the house. The latter was evidently done in the late 1940s, when two new bathrooms were installed in the back part of the second floor.

Overall, though, the appearance of the house is not drastically different from its appearance in 1917 when Paesiello Emerson took the top photo. Aside from the porches and the small addition to the garage, the overall form of the house has not changed. It retains its chimneys, including the large central chimney, and most of the windows appear to either be original or, in the case of the 6-over-6 windows, date to the late 1820s renovation. Many of the 12-over-12 windows can still be found in the back part of the house, and are likely the same ones that had once been installed on the front part of the house in the mid-1700s.

Corner of Longmeadow Street and Emerson Road, Longmeadow, Massachusetts (2)

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A wintry scene looking southeast toward the intersection of Longmeadow Street and Emerson Road in Longmeadow, around 1902-1909. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Paesiello Emerson Collection.

The scene in 2024:


These two photos show the same scene as the ones in the previous post, except these photos here were taken in the winter rather than in the summer. And, rather than being taken from ground level, they are taken from the southeastern bedroom on the second floor of the Josiah Cooley House. The photographer who took the top photo, Paesiello Emerson, lived in this house in the early 20th century with his half siblings Annie and Henry, and this is one of the many photos that he took of Longmeadow during this period.

The top photo is undated, but as explained in the previous post it must have been taken in 1909 or earlier, due to the presence of the house on the far right side of the photo. This house was demolished around 1909, when Springfield-based heating and plumbing contractor George R. Estabrook purchased the property and built a new house on the site. Likewise, the house on the left, which stood at the corner of Bliss Street, was demolished around the late 1920s in order to build St. Mary’s Church.

Today, both the church and the former Estabrook house are still standing, and the latter now serves as the rectory. Although these were built after the top photo was taken, the overall scene is still recognizable from that photo, especially when the landscape is covered with freshly-fallen snow. And, there is at least one noticeable surviving feature from the top photo—the maple tree in the foreground. It is now probably around 150 years old, and it still stands in the front yard of the Josiah Cooley House.

Corner of Longmeadow Street and Emerson Road, Longmeadow, Massachusetts

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The view looking southeast toward the intersection of Longmeadow Street and Emerson Road, sometime around 1902-1909. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Paesiello Emerson Collection.

The scene in 2023:

These two photos were taken from the front yard of the Josiah Cooley House, looking southeast across Longmeadow Street. The top photo was taken by amateur photographer Paesiello Emerson, who lived in the Cooley House, and it is one of the many images that he captured of early 20th century Longmeadow.

The top photo shows a trolley traveling northbound on Longmeadow Street. At the time, trolley tracks ran the length of the street from the Connecticut state line in the south, to the Springfield border on the north. The tracks were operated by the Springfield Street Railway, and this provided direct service from Longmeadow to Springfield. Passengers could also take the trolleys south to Hartford, so this section of track in Longmeadow provided an important link in the interurban trolley system between these two major cities.

The trolley was a sign of changing times here in Longmeadow. Throughout the 19th century, the town had remained a small agricultural community, with very little development aside for the houses that lined either side of Longmeadow Street. However, the arrival of the trolley line meant that people could now live in Longmeadow and easily commute to Springfield, so by the early 20th century many of the old farms were being subdivided into residential streets.

On the other side of Longmeadow Street in the top photo, several old houses are visible through the trees. It’s hard to say whether this was a deliberate juxtaposition on Paesiello Emerson’s part, to show the modern trolley with a backdrop of old farmhouses, but the photo certainly has that effect. These two houses, which once stood on the east side of Longmeadow Street just south of Bliss Road, were likely built at some point in the 18th or early 19th centuries, but both would disappear within the first few decades of the 20th century.

The house further to the right, just beyond the trolley, was the first to go. Its presence in the photo helps to establish the date that it was taken, because the house was demolished by about 1909, when Springfield-based heating and plumbing contractor George R. Estabrook purchased the property and built a new brick house on the site. Further to the left, the house at the corner of Bliss Street was demolished around the late 1920s, in order to build St. Mary’s Church.

Aside from new buildings across the street, this scene would undergo more changes in the years after the top photo was taken. As automobiles became more common in the early 20th century, Longmeadow Street became part of the main north-south route through the Connecticut River Valley. This was made official with the designation of New England Route 2 in 1922, which was later renumbered as U.S. Route 5 with the establishment of the United States Numbered Highway System in 1926. Longmeadow Street was a part of this route, resulting in heavy automobile traffic through the center of a town that, a few decades prior, had been a quiet village on the outskirts of Springfield. This led to concerns about speeding, and after a string of traffic fatalities in 1927 the town decided to install traffic lights at five key intersections, including one here at the corner of Emerson Road.

Today, almost nothing survives from the top photo, but this scene has still managed to retain much of its original scale, even if the buildings themselves are different. St. Mary’s Church still stands at the corner nearly a century after it was built, and next to it is the house that George Estabrook built around 1909. This house was sold to the church in the 1930s, and it now serves as the rectory. However, perhaps the only identifiable thing that survives from the top photo is the maple tree in the foreground on the right side of both photos. It is probably around 150 years old now, and it still stands here in the front yard of the Josiah Cooley House.

South Parlor, Josiah Cooley House, Longmeadow, Massachusetts (4)

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A self portrait of photographer Paesiello Emerson, in the south parlor of his house in Longmeadow, in June 1916. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Paesiello Emerson Collection.

The scene in 2023:

As with the previous post, these two photos show the south parlor of the Josiah Cooley house, a colonial-era home that was built around 1760 on Longmeadow Street in Longmeadow. The subject here in the first photo is Paesiello Emerson, an amateur photographer and retired boot manufacturer who moved here to this house in 1907 to live with his half siblings Annie and Henry Emerson.

Paesiello was originally from Hopkinton, but he later moved to Ashland and Spencer. He was a Civil War veteran, serving in the 5th Massachusetts Battery from 1863 to 1865, and he was wounded in battle in 1864, during the Overland Campaign in Virginia. Although his main occupation was as a boot manufacturer, he took up photography as a hobby around 1902, when he was about 70 years old. He continued this after his move to Longmeadow in 1907, eventually taking hundreds of high-quality photographs of the town during the 1910s and 1920s.

The first photo is a self portrait that Paesiello took here in his home. He was 84 years old at the time, but he was still living a very active life. Aside from his photography, he also enjoyed traveling, and in his later years he made long journeys to places like Bermuda, Panama, and California. He also regularly attended Civil War reunions, including one that he traveled to in Fairhaven, Massachusetts in 1927, when he was 95. The previous year, his family had tried to discourage him from attending that year’s reunion because of his advanced age. So, in 1927 he avoided potential confrontations by slipping out of the house without telling anyone. This prompted several missing person articles in newspapers, which expressed concern about his well-being. He successfully attended the event, and found the articles about himself to be amusing, but it proved to be his last reunion, because he died a few months later.

After Paesiello’s death, his sister Annie inherited his collection of photographs. She was the town’s leading historian of her era, and she had done extensive research on many homes in Longmeadow, including this one. Because of this, she likely recognized the historic value of her brother’s images, which captured scenes from the town during the time period when it was transitioning from a rural farming community into a busy suburb of Springfield. She subsequently donated the images, including the one here in this post, to the Longmeadow Historical Society, and they have since been digitized and made available online.

Annie died in 1941, followed by her brother Henry in 1943, and the house was later sold. At some point in the late 1940s or early 1950s it underwent a restoration, as shown in the second photo. This included reinstalling the original wainscoting here in the south parlor, which had been removed and taken upstairs during an early 19th century renovation. The mid-20th century work also involved moving the doorway further to the left. The door itself was removed, and the doorway was widened to about twice the width of a standard door, creating more of an open floor plan between these two rooms. As a result, one of the windows in the back of the house is partially visible on the left side of the scene. This window appears to be one of the original windows in the house, predating the later 6-over-6 windows that were installed in the front part of the house in the 1820s or 1830s.

South Parlor, Josiah Cooley House, Longmeadow, Massachusetts (3)

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The south parlor of the Josiah Cooley House in Longmeadow, probably sometime in the 1910s or 1920s. Photo from author’s collection. Photographed by Annie Emerson.

The scene in 2023:

These two photos show a view that is nearly identical to the ones in the previous post. But, while the early 20th century photo in that post shows just the room itself, this photo here shows two people seated next to the fireplace. The room here is the south parlor of the Josiah Cooley House, which was built sometime around 1760. As explained in the previous post, the room was remodeled around the 1820s or 1830s, so it looked very different in the first photo than it would have looked during the colonial era.

The man who is seated on the right side is Paesiello Emerson, an amateur photographer who lived here in this house with his half sister, Annie Emerson. They are both notable figures in the history of Longmeadow; Annie was the town’s leading historian during the early 20th century, while Paesiello used his camera to document many scenes throughout the town from about 1907 to 1927, during a time when Longmeadow was transitioning from a rural farming community into a suburb of Springfield. Together, Annie’s historical research and Paesiello’s photographic collection form a valuable resource for subsequent Longmeadow historians.

However, while Paesiello was the noted photographer, it was evidently Annie who took this particular image, likely sometime in the 1910s. On February 10, 1933, she gave a lecture titled “Old Longmeadow Houses” for the Longmeadow Woman’s Club. A summary of this lecture, found in her scrapbooks, includes a description of one of the images that was included in the presentation. It is almost certainly describing this image, and it reads:

The last picture of all was taken by Miss Emerson in her south parlor, showing her brother Parcelus [sic] and a lady cousin who was visiting them sitting in front of a fire in the large fireplace and make a home like picture.

The description does not indicate who this cousin was who is seated on the left side, but the original negative is held at the Longmeadow Historical Society. On the sleeve, it indicates that the people in the photo are “M. Fay + P. Emerson.” Annie’s mother’s maiden name was Fay, so the woman on the left was likely her cousin from her mother’s side of the family.

Annie Emerson moved into this house in 1872, when her father William Emerson purchased the property. She later attended Westfield Normal School, and worked as a public school teacher, including at the truant school in Springfield. After her retirement in 1915, she had a number of different roles here in Longmeadow. She served as a school committee member, as a Sunday school teacher at the First Church, and she was also a member of the Longmeadow Historical Society, the Longmeadow Women’s Club, and the Longmeadow Cemetery Association. However, she is best remembered for her extensive research into the town’s history, including the history of the many early homes in Longmeadow.

Annie inherited this house after the death of her parents, and by the turn of the 20th century she was living here with her younger brother Henry. Neither she nor Henry ever married, and in 1907 they were joined by their much older half brother, Paesiello. Born in 1832, he was the oldest child from their father’s first marriage. He was originally from Hopkinton, but had subsequently moved to Spencer and Ashland. He married his wife Nancy Hartshorn in 1855, and for much of his life he worked as a boot manufacturer. During the Civil War he joined the Union war effort, enlisting in the 5th Massachusetts Battery in 1863. He was wounded in action by an artillery shell on June 8, 1864 during the Overland Campaign in Virginia, and he had a scar on his hand from this injury for the rest of his life. Despite this wound, he continued to serve throughout the rest of the war.

Paesiello’s wife Nancy died in 1891, and then in 1907 he moved here to his sister’s house in Longmeadow. In the meantime, though, he took up photography as a hobby, starting around 1902 when he was about 70 years old. He would continue his photography for several more decades, and was still taking pictures well into his 90s. He died in 1927, leaving a collection of about 1,500 glass plate negatives, which Annie later donated to the Longmeadow Historical Society. This collection is now available to view online, and it includes many photos of this house. Paesiello may have taken the first photo here in this post as a self portrait, although this particular image does not appear among the negatives in the Longmeadow Historical Society collection.

Annie died in 1941, and her younger brother Henry died two years later. The house was subsequently sold, and around the late 1940s or early 1950s the new owners renovated the interior of the house, including here in the south parlor. As part of this, the colonial-era wainscoting was restored, as shown in the second photo. This wainscoting had been removed as part of the 1820s-1830s renovation, and had been installed in an upstairs room. The subsequent mid-20th century renovation apparently reinstalled the original materials here in this room, although it does not seem clear as to whether all of it is original, or whether some of the panels were modern replicas.

Aside from restoring the wainscoting, this renovation also involved removing the door to the right of the fireplace, which had likely opened into a closet or possibly the basement stairs. This door was reinstalled around the corner in the front entry hall, where it is now used as a closet door beneath the stairs. The other door in the first photo, on the left side of the scene, was also removed. The doorway was shifted further over to the left and widened, creating more of an open floor plan between the south parlor and the back room.

Other changes since the first photo was taken have included the installation of electrical outlets and central air vents. Overall, though, the room is still recognizable from the first photo, and it still has many of its historic features, including the fireplace, the corner posts, and the wide pine floorboards, which were hidden beneath the rugs in the first photo.